Mods
Player-made content Creativerse already enables and includes user content like player-made shareable Blueprints (for buildings, Arc sign art, machines, event-stuff and the like) in the workshop http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse/?appid=280790&actualsort=toprated&browsesort=toprated&p=1. Over 27000 Creativerse workshop objects have already been provided by players. There's also the special game mode "Adventures": Adventures are instances of player worlds where not only sightseeing tours for buildings can be created for others to enjoy, but all kinds of player-made quests '''(no placeable NPCs yet though), jumping/flying courses,' '''puzzles' of all sorts with spawnable mobs, treasures and/or checkpoints to be discovered, with rollercoasters, labyrinths, disappearing/re-appearing walls (or floor parts, stairs or platforms), timed devices like lights, doors to be locked with number puzzles, switch-puzzles, quest-like stories to be told and much more like that. Moreover, the game offers a decent amount of customization options, from the look of player characters (optionally enhanced with Costumes) over game world options, Admin Controls and player claims to nearly all key settings. Arc Signs can freely display (flat and slightly glowing) images, which enables players to project images of anything they like onto walls, floors/ground and ceilings, and by that creating realistic looking stoves, fridges, paintings, carpets, block patterns, flat NPC-images and any other type of decoration. Since update R65 on February 19th 2020, the Painting feature allows players to color nearly every block, placeable object and liquid in Creativerse with up to two colors. With the same update, Creator Mode arrived in Creativerse. Players who have bought the Pro DLC can set any of their worlds (in the world options) to become Creative Worlds. World owners can then permit players - both F2P and Pro - to enable Creator Mode on their game worlds. Creator Mode grants nearly all blocks and objects in infinite amounts, allows Air Walk/Hover Mode and makes player characters immortal. All blocks that the game world is made of can be removed, including Ore Nodes, but with the exception of End of the World blocks at the deepest level of the world - and of course everything in other players' claims. Actual modding Making Creativerse actually "moddable" with player-made game modifications (beyond options, customization and player-created builds/world instances) has being considered by Playful from the beginning. However please note that the future "moddability" of Creativerse will very likely never allow everyone to freely reverse engineer the game code like it's possible for older versions of Minecraft. Creativerse is a multiplayer online game and also free to play, so it cannot be compared to Minecraft at all - modding Creativerse will affect a lot of players, as well as the possibility for the developers to earn money and continue improving the game. It has always been emphasized by Playful that modding - based on a safe modding API that even non-modders can comfortably use - will become available only after the "core game" is considered ready for this. For now, Creativerse is still officially a "live open beta". This is what the official FAQs state about possible modding of Creativerse on the official webpage: And this is what the founder of Playful Corp. has stated about modding on the forums: Modding issues It's a matter of principle "Free moddability" is sort of an ideal that some players have. This vision obviously stems from comparing Creativerse with Minecraft, and from thinking that allowing players to "mod" Creativerse "must" result in dozens of great Minecraft-mod-like features to be added to the game. Please understand that even though Creativerse and Minecraft have a lot in common in terms of look and genre/playability, they are in fact very different games at their core. Also: even if you look at all the Minecraft mods out there with unillusioned eyes, you can easily see the problems that accompany modding. Sorry to say, but most of the beautiful visions and dreams you might now harbor about future Creativerse mods will very likely never become a reality, not even if the demands to allow modders to reverse-engineer (aka hack!) the game were answered by Playful and came true. The modding API that Playful is aiming at will be something very different from what Minecraft modders use to call "moddability" nowadays. Are we there yet? Frankly: Creativerse is not yet in a state of development that could considered "completed" enough to provide a stable base for player modifications or a solid modding API. You can read about the current state of game development on the official forums: https://steamcommunity.com/app/280790/discussions/0/ In actual fact, Creativerse has not even reached the stage of "completion" that would justify the financial expenditure for localization (translation) as of yet. Who will do the work? Most of the players who ask for moddability aren't even modders themselves. Instead, many of the demanders believe that the mere option to mod a game will somehow miraculously lead to awesome creations made by an army of modders that will come in flocks from nowhere and work like crazy to improve the game in all kinds of ways. Which is sadly not true, if we take a look at other games. There is no guarantee that any modder at all will want to take to the trouble to mod a really good game feature for a small unknown game like Creativerse. Smaller games are hardly modded in fact, even though the possibility exists. Another problem is that modders of course also need time to create content just like the original developers do. Large mods can take years to be completed, if you take a look at some of the mods that were made for the Elder Scrolls series or Gothic series for example. Sure, these mods are for free and provide a great gameplay (not without serious bugs sometimes though), but at the time of completion they look and feel severely outdated, the base game is already running slow or buggy, and most of the original players of the game will never take a look at all of the nice mods, because they have moved on and prefer to play newer games now... Moreover: nobody can tell if the game content that *you* would personally want the most will ever be provided by any future modder, even if Creativerse should ever become freely reverse engineerable. If you aren't willing to learn modding yourself, you should consider that your visions about how the game "could" become great by being modded will in actual fact never come true. Demanding to be scammed Pressuring developers to make their game "moddable" might actually drop the quality of game development. It is well known that several games that were practically unplayable or very boring because a lot of bugs and/or severe flaws, were saved by talented modders who stepped forward to fix said bugs and flaws. Problem is that some game developers already more or less intentionally abused the possibility of volunteers (probably) coming to the rescue by simply "declaring" their game "moddable" (often without even offering a modding API) after delivering sloppy work or abandoning their game while it was still in an unfinished or even severely bugged state. It's sad how many players didn't even recognize how that they were practically bamboozled by those game developers, because instead of getting angry, players even praised the developers for "opening up" their games in order to be reverse engineered... The sad truth is that the developers were merely resorting to the excuse: "if you don't like the game in its current state, you can mod it yourself, because we generously allow you to", in order to let volunteers fix their bugged work for free and provide popular features, options, customizations and/or game modes that the developers themselves did not bother to implement, and/or polish the game with refined graphics, textures, soundtracks etc. that the developers were not skilled enough to provide themselves. Playful could do the same - just leave the game as it is right now, change the EULA and announce that everyone is allowed to "mod" Creativerse. And then they could just abandon Creativerse. Do they really deserve to be criticized for not going down this road and making their game moddable "already"? Even though Playful has repeatedly admitted that only a small team is working on Creativerse, they are still actively working on completing the core game and on polishing it with bugfixes so that Creativerse can be considered a solid and well-playable game before they will think about a modding API. Too many cooks spoil the broth Usually, trustworthy game developers "open" their games for modding only after they've finished the game, because otherwise ongoing development can easily interfere with player-made mods in bad ways, either making player-mods unplayable or breaking the game if players try to use an "outdated" mod. Creativerse on the other hand is under constant development and this is not supposed to ever change unless it will become unavoidable - Playful has stated that they plan to add more and more game content to Creativerse "forever" (aka: as long as their company exists). It is difficult to coordinate player-created gameplay modifications and even completely new gameplay options that players would like to see provided by mods with the official ongoing game development, so that new game features that Playful will provide themselves won't render player-mods unplayable nor vice versa. Dozens of player-mods could bug out as soon as new official Creativerse patches will be distributed by Playful. If you should (also) play Minecraft, you might already know about this issue. Another problem is that even a modding API will surely need to be revised again and again in the far future. Creativerse has gone through several major changes since 2014. What if the basic game code and engine are once again in need of another thorough revision in a few years? Updating a large game to a new Unity version often requires months of work (Creativerse is Unity-based). The UI and basic graphic designs might also require an upgrade somewhen in a few years too when most players already play on much better computers/consoles/machines than today - at that point the changes could render many player mods unplayable or just very outdated in an instant and would need to be deactivated. What if their modders aren't even playing Creativerse any longer at this point and won't care to update their mods accordingly? Just like it happens with mods for other games over the years? Players of these mods will be forced to deactivate more and more mods in time and by that will lose game content that they have gotten used to, or maybe whole game worlds that become unplayable, game progress that is lost (like for quests and crafting recipes collections), maybe even once paid content will be lost and have to be re-bought, etc. Players will be very unhappy - and like so often, many will blame the game developers for this, not the modders. Herding cats Playful has a small developer team working on Creativerse that cannot offer support for player-made mods, which has already been clarified very unequivocally by Playful on the official Creativerse forums. It is quite possible that hundreds of small mods will quickly be created - because within just one month after the workshop was opened (2017-07-25), over 5,000 Blueprints had already been added by Creativerse players, and in January 2020, this number has risen to over 30,000 Blueprints. Unfortunately, many of these Blueprints are nothing more than copies of trees or parts of the landscape, others are just a loveless chunky assembly of blocks to be purchased via block kits, also many, many small box-like buildings, plus dozens of different colored variations of other player builds or "official" builds originally provided by Playful. That's pretty much the same type of "quality" that we can expect from player mods... It's well known that game-breaking bugs can easily originate from player mods, especially as soon as they aren't updated by their creators anymore, while the main game has to be kept up-to-date in technical terms. And the developers themselves won't be able to jump to the rescue by updating dozens of abandoned player-mods. This can become a major problem if very popular player mods should be affected. In the end, Playful's reputation will be the one that is going to be damaged by that, not the reputation of more or less anonymous modders. Minecraft-cloning Previews show that new players who have just played the game for a few hours or even less, as well as potential players who merely judge the game at a first glance, will criticize Creativerse as being a mere "Minecraft clone" with even less features than Minecraft has. Continuing to follow in the footsteps of Minecraft by permitting free "hackability" for Creativerse like it's possible for Minecraft is certainly not going to improve the uniqueness of Creativerse, just the contrary. Even less so when modders will start to provide mods that are in actual fact copies of well-known Minecraft features and other modders will add "copies" of well-known MC-mods. Which they would if they could - with absolute certainty. Take a look for yourself: at about 50% of all player-suggestions on the official Creativerse suggestion forums ask Playful to add more Minecraft features to Creativerse, and additionally to that, players have asked for features that they know from MC-mods. The Steam workshop too provides many player-created copies of Minecraft builds or images (like made by Arctek Signs). Playful certainly won't be happy seeing a large amount of player mods attempting to change Creativerse into Minecraft II. But also many players won't. Becoming just another Minecraft-clone is the most boring future that Creativerse could have. Whoever loves Minecraft will rather prefer play the original game itself. Quality drop For now, Creativerse at least has a nicer look than Minecraft. Unfortunately, this will very likely change with every low-quality player-mod with crappy graphics and blurry textures that is being added to the game. If you browse through the workshop, you'll quickly notice that many Blueprints are more or less randomly captured parts of game worlds. Others are resource blocks bluntly stacked together in cubic shapes or flat planes so that they can be bought as building kits for Coins more easily. Many Blueprints feature very simple shoe box buildings. And dozens of BPs are variations of existing Blueprints that were originally made and published by Playful or other original creators, sometimes even "stolen" from them and simply re-published... When looking at the mod lists of smaller games, you will realize that many mods are of low quality just as well. Most mods only change or implement one equipment or furniture type, others provide a handful of new color variations for certain items, more than just a few mods don't work like intended, some don't work at all but are known to cause bugs, and a few even let the game crash so badly that they make players lose stuff. Hundreds of low quality mods as well as several game-breaking ones will not have any value for the appeal of Creativerse at all. Technical risks Creativerse is an online game without local/dedicated user-servers/shards. Very different to Minecraft mods that can be run offline on local clients or are used by small groups of players that play via a dedicated MC servers. Every "mod" that changes the base game code substantially if not restricted properly is a risk - like for smuggling maleware or malicious routines onto the game servers, and for creating game-crashing issues too. Some mods made by amateurs look and work fine when you start to use them, but the longer they are active, the more bugs and problems pile up. Mods like that, and even more so several mods combined that collided internally, have already rendered Minecraft worlds unusable or at least mostly unplayable already, others have been known to lock up client computers. The Steam workshop does not provide sufficient filters that would safely prevent malicious code to be uploaded. Other means have to be developed, very likely together with strict restrictions, in order to prevent destruction. Abandonware piling up Sadly, the majority of modders usually stop caring for their mods for any game after a few months to a few years, as can be seen when taking a look at the modding scene of any long-running game. If you already know other moddable games, you will know that only very few mods are still kept alive by their creators after a few years. As an example: the net is littered with thousands of outdated and often unusable Minecraft mods. Of course there's always a (very) small percentage of loyal players who won't stop improving their mods for years. This might be a large number when it comes to Minecraft, a game that is being played by millions if not billions of players. But in case of a rather unknown F2P game like Creativerse, the ones who continue to update and improve mods will very likely only be a meager handful of members of the already small community. If one player-mod outdates at one point and has to be deactivated, this should not break a ton of other mods that rely on the now deactivated one either. Since modders are also customers and such cannot be held responsible by Playful to always keep their mods updated to the latest versions of the base game for years, a modding API has to ensure that the gameplay of players on game worlds where mods are deactivated will not lose all meaning and that game worlds will not even break completely when player-mods outdate. Griefing playgrounds Creativerse is a family-friendly multiplayer game that tries hard to provide as much safety from griefers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griefer ) and trolls as possible. We know from other games that now and then malicious mods will be made just in order to spite and grief others in multiplayer, like to ruin their creations or render their game worlds unplayable... Which means that player-mods will need to be restricted in a way that they aren't allow to override or alter safety settings of Creativerse players like permission ranks on game worlds and on player claims, fire spreading options, corruption spreading options, explosives disabling and the like. Otherwise, Playful would risk seeing their players being griefed out of the game by the dozens. Getting sued Smaller issues need to be addressed too - like stolen artwork, textures and the like that could easily be used in mods that can lead to Playful being charged or even sued for hosting this unknowingly. Playful as a small company cannot take their time to check every player-created content for possible copyright-issues, like licensed music, sound effects or whatever. Even worse if legally forbidden content would be hidden somewhere in a mod that could damage the reputation of both Creativerse and Playful if it should come to light. Going out of business Creativerse is an F2P game that relies on the sales of Store items, player claims, fancy block textures, building kits and the special game features that the Pro DLC provides. Developers need to eat to survive, they cannot afford to work for free. Some of the future improvements are supposed to become DLCs or Store-exclusive content. Many players like to buy block kits for Blueprints with dozens to hundreds of crafted blocks in order to save time and start building right away. Playful relies on these sales for income in order to pay their bills and keep the game online. Playful also has a long list of features that they plan to implement to Creativerse one after another, some of which are already under way more or less. Some of these features are already very common in many other sandbox games, but Playful wants to create their own unique variants fitting to the special style of Creativerse. Unfortunately, it's very possible that modders would like to implement similar features that the official professional developers want to create - usually modders tend to quickly copy the most common and popular types of such features that other sandbox games already feature, since this is the easiest way. Copying features by digging into other games could accomplish providing the mods a lot faster than the official development can provide. Of course, working quickly usually results in crappy and sometimes even bugged ways. Like usual, most mods will be of a much lower quality than uniquely designed features can be coded by skilled developers with the help of the professional artists, sound artists and animators at Playful Corp. ... Still: how many players will want to spend money for a feature that Playful officially develops just because it looks better and is probably less bugged, as long as it does the same thing that several free player-mods can seemingly do? Why shouldn't modders try to copy and even improve the current pay-content like the glider, flashlight, more inventory slots, costumes etc., if they were allowed to do so? If free alternatives exist to the purchasable DLCs, Playful could be cheated out of their winnings efficiently. As long as fancy block textures are part of the regular Creativerse income for Playful, providing free texture pack mods could definitely become a thing that would again result in Store-offers not being bought by players. It should be obvious that nobody who works at Playful would want their company to go bankrupt. Because of this, an F2P game cannot ever possibly allow "free" modding in the future. Instead, a modding API has to be designed that will ensure that player-made content will not recreate, obviate or preempt any of the purchasable game content offered by Playful via Store, DLCs and building kits. Also not future ones... The EULA forbids unauthorized modifying of game data/files Altering Creativerse game data/files is already possible, but can get you sued Nowadays many people know how to extract graphic files or take a look into Unity files of a game program. However you are not allowed to use this in any way to alter the game or make the data known on any public platform. If you want to do so, you have to ask Playful as the copyright-holders for their permission beforehand. If you have not downloaded Creativerse yet, then please note that you will have to accept the EULA at the time you install Creativerse. This is standard for nearly every multiplayer online game, and you will not be allowed to play this game if you do not agree to respect the copyrights of Creativerse's developers. If you are not willing to abide by the EULA (which includes the usual netiquette towards your fellow players, but also forbids using the game to earn money for yourself and to modify game files) then you should not even bother clicking on "I agree/accept". If you do not agree to the EULA, you are not permitted to install the game on your computer nor to play Creativerse on any computer at all. If you already play Creativerse, then you must have accepted the EULA ''' By clicking on the "I agree" (or "I accept") button when installing the game or starting to play the game via Steam for the first time ''you have promised to abide by the terms and conditions'', even if you perhaps have just "clicked them away" and have not bothered actually reading them. Still the EULA is a legally binding contract. Even if you did not read it, you have accepted its terms by clicking the agreement button. If you actually do not agree to the terms of the EULA, you are simply not allowed to play the game. Here are some excerpts from the EULA regarding "modding" (hacking): http://www.playfulcorp.com/creativerse_eula.html In regard of any modifications that you plan to make for/to the game or that other players have created '''unauthorized, you should call your attention to this part of the EULA for Creativerse: "Except for the initial loading of the Game Software on a single unit you shall not, without our express written consent: (a) Copy or reproduce, auction, loan, rent, lease, sublicense, gift or transfer the Game Software; (b) Modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, derive source code from, disassemble, decompile or create derivative works based on the Game Software or any accompanying materials, except to the extent allowed under any applicable law or expressly allowed by us. Any use of the Game Software in violation of these limitations will be regarded as an infringement of our copyrights in and to the Game Software. Obviously, we cannot have you hacking our software. Therefore, by accepting the terms of this EULA, you further agree that you will not, under any circumstances: (a) Modify the Game Software in any way, including but not limited to the use, development, or sale of cheats, automation software (bots), hacks, mods, whether developed by you or a third party; (b) Exploit the Game Software for any commercial purpose, including without limitation (1) use at a cyber café, computer gaming center or any other location-based site; (2) for gathering in-game currency, items or resources for sale outside the Game Software; or (3) for performing in-game services in exchange for payment outside the Game Software; © Remove, disable, modify, deface, or circumvent any security protections, proprietary notices or labels contained on or within the Game Software; (d) Export or re-export the Game Software or any copy or adaptation in violation of any applicable laws or regulations; (e) Create data or executable programs that mimic data or functionality in the Game Software; (f) Use any unlawful, obscene, pornographic, provocative, racist, libelous, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, vulgar, or hateful language or language invasive of another's privacy on the forums and chats relating to the Game Software; (g) Submit any content containing unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any other form of solicitation or to submit any content containing software viruses or malware of any kind; or (h) Solicit or attempt to solicit other Game Software user’s personal information or collect or post their private information. Any use of the Game Software in violation of these limitations will be regarded as an infringement to this EULA and will be pursued to the fullest extent permissible under the law." If you break your legal contract with Playful by modding (= hacking) Creativerse game files unauthorized by Playful, then you can be held responsible at court. Category:Gameplay